Imperial Glory
by Historically Fictional
Summary: Can the repentance of two of the greatest men in Imperial history, and the return of two expunged from it, save the Imperium from shattering? The End Times have come. Ork, Tyranid, Chaos, corruption, and hundreds more threats lurk in the shadows, with only a few motes of light left to push back the darkness. And in it all, Magnus the Red makes a choice.


**Magnus I**

The betrayed son sat in his chair, and clenched a red fist against his throne's frame. His rage had been eternal, for millenia on end. Stare, rage, construct and destroy all that lay around him. Fires of his home played in one corner - psionic puppets of his father torn asunder lay in a pile next to the trappings of Russ and his playthings, captured and tortured by Daemon and Thousand Son alike. Stoic, his guards stood along his sides, watching the carnage he unleashed upon the room.

But, for the first time in Millenia, the Red Lord was silent. His rage was empty. His gauntleted fist held the chair's arm with a groan of metal and twist of steel. One of his emperor puppets was held before him, the head slowly being stitched together by the healing sorcery so rarely seen in the depths of the warp. He sat in concentration, slowly repairing the figure before him, and simply held it with his mind, floating. Its cold eyes stared at him, and he stared at it. The Rubric Marines simply watched with dull monotony, dead and lifeless as is their nature. Dead and lifeless – Magnus looked at the figure before him and saw the gray pallor, the emptiness. Nothing, compared to the father he had known and wished for the love and attention of.

Magnus missed him as much as he hated him. But for the first time, rather than rip his father too shreds in nostalgia, he simply dissolved it into the haze of the warp, watching its specks float away. He could see his father's light, far off – even within the depths of this eye of pain and torment. It shone not with the brightness of aspiration as it did so long ago, but with the monotonous slag of trying to simply hold it all together. Hold it as men like Magnus sought to tear it to pieces. But today, Magnus decided, he would not be that man. No longer. Ten millenia were more than enough to recognize the value of being more than just an angry man in a tower. He watched his proud legion turn from powerful wizards and strong warriors as their shields, to corrupt mad sorcerors and little more than tin suits of empty souls. He watched his brothers turn mad, and felt himself that way, too. But no more. Not this day.

For the Magnus residing within the skull of the mad Daemon prince was not the same Magnus that had inhabited it for so many years.

It was the Magnus that loved his father. Loved his brothers. Loved Mankind and all it stood for. And, for the first time, the Magnus that knew it had failed. Miserably. Failed by ignoring commands, ignoring the vision the Emperor had for what would result. Ignored the signs of corruption and the preying of Tzeentch's powers going according to plan. He had failed, and rejected any attempt at redemption. But Russ had borne down upon him, tried to tear him limb from limb. Magnus knew now, more than ever, what his damned brother had meant when he had disappeared from them forever. Knew the madness. Knew the horror. And now he knew, above all else, that sitting in his tower was of no damned value any more.

Standing, his legs shaking from such a time alone in the room, the Daemon Prince of Tzeentch stood to march out to his balcony. With a sweep of his hands, the room's messiness dissolved to a sterile appearance, warping the surface into order. A few lesser Daemons visibly recoiled at such ordered cleanliness, hissing away to nothing. For the first time in all his years here in the tower, Magnus the Red looked out with his singular eye upon the glowing fields of the Planet of the Sorcerers, watching as groups of men battled it out, slaves marching to and fro, with a full company of honor guard Rubric Marines simply standing outside his tower. Forever standing. Forever waiting. Magnus rose a hand, and yelled a command. "Purge the madness from this place."

And it was done. Off his army marched, their dusty corpses marching in combatant array. Slaves were cut free, Sorcerers shot to shreds, mutants and cultists shorn apart. All the while, Magnus felt himself growing weaker and weaker, the chains binding him to Tzeentch slowly wrapping around his throat like a constricting snake, until he sensed a rushing away, a blackening entropy field rushing out of his very skin and away, off into his chamber. Glancing down at his hands, and into a mirror on the balcony wall, he noted that his daemonic and red appearance had fled, leaving him a gaunt and white man with an empty eye socket, the other tinged with a red iris. His face was grim, haggard, and bony. With a few moments of a beating heart in horror at what he had become, he heard a roar from inside. Magnus didn't flinch, and stepped in with all the pride he could muster. His sword was already drawing as a red-hued Daemon stared him in the eye.

"Have you given in, Magnus?" It asked in a roaring and gutteral voice, its single eye staring him down. "Was every ounce of power and energy I could provide you not enough? Were the gifts I bestowed not to your liking? It's oft a better plan to provide commentary before storming out of an establishment, would you not say?" The Demon asked. It looked almost like... him.

"I gave in to you." Magnus said, staring down his doppleganger in equal measure. He felt the crackle of foul energies along his hands, and watched his opponent slowly smile a malevolent smile.

"And so you did, Magnus." The Demon said. "You gave in to your inner Daemon. Fear, uncertainty, and gave it life in this Prince of Change you see now." But then its face frowned, suddenly. "And now you have rejected your child, just as you rejected the changes in your children I fostered long ago. I had hoped you might see that they were so better off – instead, you locked them away and tore their bodies and souls to shreds. Just like the dolls you've made and ruined these millenia."

"Damn you." Magnus said, and shot out a hand. A bolt of lightning connected squarely with the Daemon, knocking it back. "I betrayed all I stood for, left my Father's word, and still you torment me!"

The Princeling shook his head. "Can you torment yourself, Magnus?"

"Every. Day." His sword slashed out, meeting a hastily formed psychic blade as the pair danced across the room, the guts and blood of each spilling across the room in equal measure. It was readily apparent that Magnus was too weak to carry on, with each passing blow from the Prince slowly weakening the already frail and lifeless Primarch. After a solid fifteen minutes of strike, parry, slash, and bleed, the pair found themselves catching breath in the ruins of the impossibly high tower, a horde of Rubric Marines surrounding them.

"Fire, my warriors, kill this filth!" The Doppleganger shouted with rage, and they all rose their weapons calmly, in unision. They did not, however, fire. "FIRE!" It yelled, blood pouring from its newly severed arm. Magnus was on the ground, trying to lift himself up. He croaked out in a small voice, but it was inaudible. One Rubric Marine, silently and without issue, marched to Magnus' side and knelt, cocking its helm. Magnus croaked again, and the Rubric Marine nodded, gathering up the sword. The Prince of Change let out a maniacal laugh and a small grin, shaking his head. "This is the best you can do, Magnus? A single Rubric Marine against a Prince of Change?"

The Rubric Marine struck out, then, in a lash of fury. Its movements, precise and practiced, parried strike after harried strike by the Prince, never managing an offensive strike. Almost as if it was his duty to guard the Primarch with his heart and soul. Magnus, meanwhile, sat in the dirst with his face down, wincing in pain and concentration. Slowly, surely, the earth beneath them all began to shudder and quake, the ground itself beginning to crack. A combination of opening fissure and a strong strike made the Rubric Marine lose balance, sending it careening into the depths with Magnus' blade. Cackling with malice once more, the Prince rose his blade without a moment's hesitation, ready to end the Primarch and send him off to his final eternity.

He never got the chance.

In a flash of thunder and light, Magnus the Red rose up from the ground, floating. His empty socket glowed in a ball of red lightning, spitting outwards and cutting the Daemon Prince in half with his simple shock of destruction. Warp Energies mixed around the corpse and the whole world itself, the Eye of Terror itself changing in the chaos. Screams and yells the planet over were let out as Daemon and Sorceror lost their links and chains, ripping their very minds to pieces as the warp collapsed around them – the true materium slowly warping into place around the planet. Magnus, exhausted, collapsed to his face amidst the rubble of the Tower, leaving his Rubric Marines to their duty. By squad they marched away, slowly and surely pacifying every inch of the planet.

When the Wolves had burnt Prospero, they murdered every Thousand Son they could get their hands upon in the suspection they were traitors to the Emperor. Now, the Thousand Sons march with singular purpose – to truly kill those traitors to the Emperor. And, in various parts of space the galaxy over, this ripple in the Immaterium will shape the coming End Times and the future history of the Imperium, forever.


End file.
